


socks: a temporary look into one jonathan sims' anxieties about getting promoted

by tonathanjims



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gratuitious rambling and overly descriptive sentences, Introspection, Multi, Past JonGeorgie, Totally an excuse to project onto Jon and to exercise my sad JonTim feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-07
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24587488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonathanjims/pseuds/tonathanjims
Summary: Jon's uneasy morning before his first day as the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute.
Relationships: Georgie Barker/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Tim Stoker
Kudos: 24





	socks: a temporary look into one jonathan sims' anxieties about getting promoted

An organized set of clothes put out by himself yesterday lies meticulously ordered in a row. First day, new job. Jon had set them out the previous night despite having set an alarm that allowed for several hours of downtime before work was to start. Not that there really was any downtime for someone with a mind like his. It buzzed faintly in the background, making connections and following all the white rabbits that the menagerie inside his brain could conjure up, something he’s long since made a habit of ignoring. To the best of his ability at least. 

The distinct feeling of sleep deprivation nibbles at the edges of his psyche, coaxing him to fall back asleep and let the rest of the morning go until he really has to leave his flat but he aggressively waves it away. Just because he couldn’t fall asleep until 3 AM and got up, he doesn’t know, maybe two hours right after that.

Jon’s wide awake though. And he can hear, everything. Winter was on its last legs, ready to make it’s quiet exit stage left for spring to come prancing in but its hold over the night sky remains. Outside it is still dark, with the edges of early dawn pink seeping in, nipping gently. It’s still too early for most, but the humdrum of a few cars and commuters coming back from a night shift, or perhaps to leave for an early morning shift drones on. He takes notice of that, briefly distracted by a high pitched whine that he can’t pinpoint the origin of exactly, and he closes his eyes, tracking it through the sonic waves alone. 

That might have been a mistake, as the loss of one sense soon amplified the others and suddenly he feels too inside of himself, aware and not aware at the same time. Suddenly all the sounds erupt into cascading, intense volumes as the high pitched whine picks up full throttle. Suddenly his heartbeat, instantly beating out its rhythm of life, but no, no, too much life. It picks up speed. First day, new job. The immense pressure he’s been putting on himself. Atlas holding up the world. He lets out an amused noise at that, mind racing to make several more connections and metaphors with mythology. He waves this away as well, uncomfortable with the thought that he would ever be the main character of any story.

Jon resolves to sleep earlier. He does that a lot.

He dresses himself, and it’s a quiet affair of calmly pulling arms through sleeves, legs through slacks, the repetitive, unconscious movements of one whose worn this specific set of clothing over and over again for years. He muses that he should look into replacing some articles at some point, but then the faint echoes of a conversation he’s already had with himself spill in. These are perfectly suitable. They haven’t torn, ripped, or had a stray thread that he hasn’t taken care of. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need it. Jon quashes the part of his mind, that achingly small part of his mind that wants to indulge, wants to fall deep into hedonism to just let himself go. He doesn’t have time for that.

His hand reaches down towards the neatly folded sock at the end of the little train of clothes he set out. He never balls them up, his grandmother instilling this habit in him. He can still remember her lecturing him on never stretching the fabric to make the socks last longer. He’s not entirely sure where the scrappiness and ingenuity of his own ended and where his grandmother’s influence began. Okay. Focus. Last bit. It’s just the socks now. First day, new job. 

He decides that doing this while standing up is the best possible way to pull this off. Halfway through slipping his toes in and reaching to pull it up, he sways, losing balance and falls straight on his ass. 

Ouch.

...

He’s fallen down now. Might as well stay there. 

The sock makes its way all the way around his foot, ending at his ankle. He twists around awkwardly to reach for the other pair but the soreness of his posture down on the ground stops him from shuffling too much. He’s only thirty-seven, this kind of fall really shouldn’t be affecting him this much. The physical pain is less prevalent than the second hand embarrassment of having to witness himself trip and fall several times in his head, his mind replaying the same thing over and over again to really reinforce the memory. Good job, idiot.

A collection of vague, fuzzy memories enters his mind of sitting down in the same position. They swim around arbitrarily, his neurons firing and zapping, making quick connections between them as they float to the forefront of his head.

The first is one of his grandmother fussing over him, rolling socks too long for his liking, unravelling itself at the bottom of his knees. He remembers not what she said to him exactly but the feeling of being chided for dirtying them in the past. His childhood self disdainfully looked at its crisp, off white patterns that twisted in and out and he distinctly remembers tracking the seams with his eyes, watching each individual thread weave in and out, holding together a greater whole, patterns upon patterns that you only notice from close, careful observation. He’s always liked being enamoured enough by something that keeps his attention on it for more than a minute. At this point he recalls having tuned out his grandmother’s voice, thinking about what sort of adventures he’d get up to that day, exploring the furthest reaches of the coastline or the hidden crannies of the arcade that he could squeeze into. The other day he had found a broken television set in the forest and spent several hours trying to “fix” it. He considers how he spent a lot of his childhood alone.

That train of thought brings him to try not to think about how he has barely any memories of his parents. Not that this brings him much angst aside from the what-if rabbit holes he sometimes ventures into, but he doesn’t even have the experience of any other life to properly compare his imagination with, but he feels slightly guilty at having lived all these years past any proper feelings for them.

The second is of an early morning scramble during uni. He remembers how warm the sheets were moments before Georgie panickedly jabbed their cruddy digital alarm clock in his face, the bright neon green of it flashing in his eyes as he blearily blinked the sleep away. 8:53. Shit. 

He doesn’t remember which lecture they were late for but that’s an irrelevant detail. He does remember tossing each other random bits of clothing they could find on the floor (they hadn’t moved in together but they might as well have) and both of them seamlessly moving around the kitchen to pop in some toast, spread whatever they had over it and chuck it in their mouths as fast as possible. They were still chewing bits of it while pushing the other out of the way to scrabble their way to the entrance. Georgie had pointed out that in their mad, five minute rush to get to the door, Jon had forgotten to put socks on and she rolled her eyes at him, reprimanding him while sprinting back to the bedroom to throw a set of balled up socks. Jon remembers thinking of his grandmother then too, about how disappointed she would have been. Not like it mattered though, she wasn’t there to see it. He pulled up his socks, less deliberate than usual, haphazardly dressed. He’s sure that he put the wrong ones on, either these were Georgie’s or he put the left on right and vice versa, because later in the lecture his foot tapping felt slightly off against the fabric. 

He tries not to think about Georgie, and how she was probably the last person he had any real connection with. First day, new job. His hand instinctively reaches to the band of the sock, pulling it back as far as he felt it necessary to and letting it free, the elastic slapping back against his skin. Georgie used to do that to get his attention if he was too absorbed in a book. The ghost of a smile passes over his face, but it isn’t very warm. More melancholy than anything else.

The socks he’s put on are the same ones that he’s had for years. He remembers buying a whole new set with the first paycheck he got back when he was new to the institute, fresh faced and hungry for answers about an event that happened when he was eight years old. He thinks that maybe it’s not worth having that goal anymore, nothing’s come about it for so long. Something stops him from accepting that though. His mind flickers back to the socks. It’s been nearly half a decade now. The last of the vague memories flashes through his mind as he recalls a specific pair that he’s tucked into the furthest corner of his sock drawer. You have an organized sock drawer? The teasing lilt is familiar, more familiar than any memory of grandma or even Georgie, because it belongs to Tim. His co-worker. Sort of.

They’ve moved on from each other. Or at least, Tim has. Jon’s sure of that. It’s not like they ended particularly badly, just didn’t fit each other very well. He still trusts him though, work-wise, he’s a damn good researcher. He then reluctantly remembers. First day, new job. Guess he’s the boss now. The socks feel slightly out of place now, and his eyes trail over to the sock drawer, burning through the layers of cheaply put together wood paneling, triangulating the exact position of the socks he’s tried so hard not to think about. At least with his other memories he can easily put it away since there were no physical objects that carried far more meaning than simply warming his cold toes.

He hesitates. 

With stilted robotic movements, shoulders hunched and unwilling to accept the reality of what he’s totally involuntarily doing, he peels off the socks he just put on and folds them neatly again. He shuffles towards the drawers and gently pulls out the sock drawer halfway out only, wrinkled slacks be damned. He spots the empty slot where the aforementioned pair used to lie and tucks it back in, before reaching in without looking to retrieve a pair of balled up socks that don’t belong to him.

Tim had only stayed over once, Jon had a tendency to stay out of his flat whenever he could, but both of them were working late one day and Jon invited him over on a whim. He recalls instantly regretting it as soon as the words left his mouth but Tim had brightly accepted, citing an unwillingness to make the ten minute walk that they both knew took absolutely no time from the Tube stop close to his flat. An uneasy trek towards his home had been tentatively lightened by Tim’s comments about the local area, telling Jon things that even he hadn’t known in his five, nearly six years of living there. He remembers thinking that he should get out more, maybe with Tim, but he dispelled the thought in the same way he did with everything that sounded mildly indulgent.

He stiffened at the idea that they had to share a bed, berating himself for forgetting he had a distinct lack of couch in his flat, and Tim had cracked a joke about sleeping on the kitchen counter. Tim had made them a simple breakfast (as a sort of thanks), and Jon had thanked and cursed whatever higher power was out there that nothing had happened. Of course, later, something did happen, little stolen kisses from in between the racks of files and books, staying late together to roll around in office chairs, talking about inane things, Jon finding a blanket or two draped on top of him whenever he fell asleep at the table. But that was later. Both of them left the flat quickly, no proper conversation about what just transpired, and it never happened again. Jon had found the pair of socks he left behind when he got home later that day, chastising himself for having created this awkward situation he’d have to deal with.

Keep them! Tim had smiled, amused at the “insane” lengths that Jon had taken just to give his socks back. Jon had washed them, air dried them then, with great chagrin as it went against every instinct (he doesn’t think about the brief rebellion he had in uni), balled them up. He had produced them from where he had been holding it behind his back for at least a couple hours, debating whether he brought it up halfway through casual conversation or started with an admonishment at Tim for forgetting his things. He did neither, and had, rather formally, announced that he had Tim’s socks. With that kind of response, Jon hadn’t known what to do with them so he just tucked them back into his bag and kept it there for a week before fishing them out to store in the darkest corner of his beloved sock drawer. Again, they hadn’t ended badly or anything. Just a matter of different tastes. 

He sits on the bed this time, carefully unravelling the tangle of sock matter with the most delicate touch, and properly examines the checkered blue patterns of navy, robin’s egg blue, cerulean, ultramarine... blue. Jon almost laughs out loud at himself, he knows so much about blue and nearly nothing about Tim. He tucks away the disappointment in himself, disappointment at his inability to open up to anyone. Something tells him that the reason why they were so drawn to each other in the first place was that it was meant to end casually, because Tim didn’t really tell Jon much about himself either. He seemed to be able to talk so much without revealing anything underneath, which was something Jon was well versed in. Talk about your interests, talk about what you know, stick to the facts, the concrete facts, because you don’t really know yourself.

He slips on the right foot, then the left, kicking out his feet for a second to examine them. Blue. Not his color, but that didn’t matter. It felt comfortable. They had a quality to them that brought solace to him especially since... First day, new job.

Jon stands up from the bed, armed with nothing but a professional demeanor that he’s going to play up, some faded clothes with the quality that they’ve been worn one too many times, and some blue socks. He is weary with exhaustion and the weight of memories. He’s going to have to put those away for now.

First day, new job. 

Put your shoes on.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I rarely write, so this was surprisingly fun.
> 
> After our daily round of friendly banter, one of my best friends (who has listened to a grand total of 13 episodes of the Magnus Archives) challenged me to write 2.5k on a six-second moment. She picked "putting socks on". I think I cheated a tad bit with the first section but, hah, I won this challenge like a champ.
> 
> TMA's the first fandom to properly kick my butt back into writing after several years of chickening out. It's my obsessive attachment to Jon. 
> 
> While you're here, pop by these links to keep the conversation going about Black Lives Matter and the anti-terrorist bill over in the Philippines:  
> https://blacklivesmatter.carrd.co/  
> https://junkterrorbill.carrd.co/


End file.
